While it will become great so that people can live in space, a “weightless” environment poses some serious challenges. Humans work best on the Earth’s surface, where they are acted upon by a constant force of gravity. Without it, yes famous consequences prolonged exposure to microgravity, including loss of bone mass and muscle weakness.
So if we want to live in space, we’ll need to create an artificial gravity environment. We only have one method to do it: Build a vehicle that moves with constant acceleration. The most common concept is to create a spinning spaceship. But that’s not quite as easy as it seems. Here’s why.
feel the weight
First, learn the basics of gravity and what it means to feel your weight.
Gravity is the force of attraction between objects with mass. Since both your body and the Earth have mass, there is a force of gravity pulling you towards the Earth and keeping you on the ground. Although this force is constantly acting on you, you do not feel it, because the Earth is simultaneously pulling all of parts of your body, making the effect undetectable.
I know what you’re thinking: “I’m sitting here in this chair, and I can totally feel my weight.” Actually, what you’re feeling isn’t gravity. It’s the force of the chair (and the ground) pushing you up. We call this upward force your “apparent weight.”
We can get a good feel for the concept of apparent weight by taking a quick ride in an elevator. The elevator starts at rest. But when you press a button, it starts to move upwards. That means it must have upward acceleration—at least for a very short time, until the elevator reaches its travel speed. During this upward acceleration, you feel a little heavier. Then, when the elevator approaches the programmed floor, it must slow down. That means it accelerates in the downward direction. During this time, you feel lighter.
But of course, your actual weight never fluctuates. Your net weight is a measure of how much gravity is acting on your body and it is the result of the interaction between your mass (m) as well as the mass of the Earth and your distance from the center of the Earth. it. On Earth, gravity exerts a force of 9.8 Newtons/kg. (Mass and weight are different thingsso on a planet with different gravity, your weight will be different, even though your mass will be the same.)
Taking the elevator doesn’t change any of these factors. What it changes is yours clear weight. It’s a bit weird, but this effect is extremely useful for spaceships.
linear acceleration
Let’s say you’re in space without gravity—or even in low Earth orbit, where there’s microgravity, which is what we call the “zero-gravity” environment. What if your spaceship had a giant elevator that was constantly accelerating upwards? If the elevator’s acceleration had the same value as the gravitational field on the Earth’s surface, your weight would be the same as it is now.
Of course, a spaceship with infinite elevators is impractical. It would be easier to just make the whole car accelerate. That would absolutely create artificial gravity. In fact, this is the main method used on ships in the sci-fi series extension.
